1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print system, a printing apparatus, and a computer program product.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, among print systems based on a general-purpose operating system such as Windows (registered trademark) or Unix (registered trademark), many offices and households are using a print system into which printer drivers prepared for respective printing apparatuses and printer emulations are introduced.
On the other hand, there is an increasing diversity of mobile terminals, such as mobile phones, on which operating systems specific to manufacturers or models are installed. As performance of mobile terminals is improved, the need for printing from the mobile terminals has also increased. However, in the present situation it is difficult to provide print systems or printer drivers compatible with the diversity of individual mobile terminals. Thus, a method of providing a printing service using an email system that is a relatively shared infrastructure has been used widely.
Problems with the printing service through the email system are to obtain information on the print settings provided by a printing apparatus to be used and how to designate the desired print settings, based on the information, from a mobile terminal. As a print system which can solve these problems, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-115559 discloses a print system in which a plurality of email addresses are assigned to a printing apparatus such that the different email addresses are associated with the different print settings. When using the print system, a user sends an email, attached to print data (data to be printed), to one of the email addresses that correspond to the desired print setting from a mobile terminal, so that the user can print the print data with desired print settings.
However, in this print system, a large number of email addresses are needed when there are diverse print settings and options. Suppose, for example, that a combination of the print settings can be chosen from the following print settings: two settings for document orientation, three settings for colors and monochrome, three settings for printing methods, eight settings for sheet sizes, three settings for aggregation, five settings for duplex binding, three settings for stapling, three settings for punching, and two settings for sorting; 38880 (=2×3×3×8×3×5×3×3×2) email addresses are required.
If the printing apparatus is used on a daily basis by limited users, preparing or storing only a limited number of email addresses corresponding to combinations of frequently used print settings may be a practicable solution. However, many of the printing needs from mobile terminals involve using printing apparatuses which are not routinely used, for example, a printing apparatus used for a business purpose that is installed in the office of a visiting site or outside the office or a printing apparatus used for a private purpose that is installed in a convenience store.
That is, in this print system, the user needs to know in advance what kind of print settings the printing apparatus, that is to be used, has. Moreover, the user needs to prepare or to know an email address corresponding to the combination of print settings which the user wants to use, or to select an email address from a massive list of email addresses corresponding to combinations of print settings. However, it is very difficult to accomplish such an operation.